


meeting of two entities on a park bench

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Jane-Typical Worms, Losing Your Humanity, Loss of Identity, Whump, takes place sometime between mag 11 and the season 1 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 19:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21184901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Over the course of his life, Oliver Banks crosses paths with the late Jane Prentiss three times.Crossposted from @prentissed.





	meeting of two entities on a park bench

Over the course of his life, Oliver Banks crosses paths with the late Jane Prentiss three times.

The first time he saw her it was in a dream, as he was apt to do back when the End didn’t have such an ironclad grip on him. He was heartbroken back then. Looking back now, Graham Folger seems like such a long time ago, and so ultimately mundane compared to the turns Oliver’s life (unlife) has taken, but at the time the pain was fresh and searing as a burning coal. Six years used to be a long time.

He wandered the desolate streets of dreaming, called by gentle tugs on his aching subconscious, feeling empty. He’d almost been glad for the nightmarish landscape in a sense, if not for the stark, frightening clarity it projected. There was a cold comfort in knowing exactly when one was going to die. (Then again, maybe he was biased. It wasn’t his death he was seeing, after all.) The frozen, fear-twisted faces of the people he passed by were no longer alarming.

The tendrils guided him back to the Magnus Institute – perhaps this was morbid, but he’d almost been surprised there weren’t more deaths in that place, considering all the chaotic things going on inside. Maybe whatever entity lorded over there really cared about its employees. Or, more likely, it was protecting the pawns it was planning to use. He’d already given his statement, so it was somewhat surprising to find himself back there, but the reason became apparent as he stepped into the basement.

The dark, pulsing tendrils were wrapped around a haggard-looking woman. Once glance told Oliver she wasn’t a normal human being. She had a mass of wild, matted hair and her skin was grotesquely honeycombed with worm-filled holes across her bare shoulders. Honestly, she looked dead already, if not for the fact that she was standing with her hands clutched to her throat, her mouth contorted into a horrifically wide scream.

Oliver wasn’t sure what to make of that, until he entered the Good Energies crystal shop in Archbishop.

“Welcome!” Her name tag read Jane Prentiss, and the smile she gave him was genuine, friendly. Her hair was combed neatly and pulled into a ponytail. She was sorting through some Wicca paraphernalia.

As soon as he heard her voice he knew. He _knew_.

It was rather rude in retrospect. He’d just stood there, frozen, feeling whirling emotions rise up under his skin but not knowing what to do with them. Her expression morphed from friendly customer service worker to a small smile of mild confusion. They stared at each other until without saying anything he excused himself, and never set foot in that shop again.

He really didn’t expect to see her a third time. Most people he saw in his dreams, that was usually the first and last ever time they’d come into contact. Then again Jane didn’t seem to be a very usual person, so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised.

At that point, Oliver had begun to see the veins in waking as well as sleep, and the line between the two was starting to blur. Oliver spent most of his time in a haze. The people walking past him paid him no notice, nor to the swirling dark masses around them. There wasn’t much he could do. He warned people when he could, but it had yet to help.

He hadn’t expected a hand to reach out and grab him, spinning him around to face the twitching, hunched figure of Jane Prentiss.

Oliver startled back. Prentiss looked like she was rotting from the inside out. Her face wasn’t quite taken over by the squirming white masses, but it was getting there. Oliver was prepared for her to make an attack, braced himself for the assault of worms against his eyes. But there were no tendrils around himself. No pulsing veins where they might break the skin. Chancing a peek, Oliver looked to realize Jane’s hand wasn’t trying to dig into his chest or tear out his throat, but clutched in the cloth of his sweater, trembling.

Through the writhing worms, he saw two dark, wide eyes shining with something familiar. Pain. Confusion. Jane Prentiss was afraid.

Her gray, worm-bitten lips curled to form the phrase, “Help me.”

He knew, suddenly, exactly what this feeling was. The look on the face of every frozen body he’d passed in his dream, of dawning horror and panic and that last thought of, _I don’t want to die. It isn’t fair._ The look on his father’s face. All that time ago, so long past it had nearly faded completely from memory.

For the first time in years, Oliver felt a sharp pang of pity in his chest, and a deep sadness.

Jane Prentiss continued to stand there, her grip on Oliver waning. “_Help me_…”

Oliver looked at her for a long second. Then, slowly, he reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tugging her into a tight embrace. Jane shuddered under his grasp, he could feel the worms squirming through the fabric of his coat and under her sallow, pockmarked skin.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

Jane made a quiet, terrible sound, like a wounded animal.

“I’ll stay here if you want.” Oliver took the diseased hand still clenched in his shirt, tugging until the iron grip loosened, and continued to hold it as it dangled between them. “I can’t stop it from happening. But I can stay here with you, till it comes.”

She stood there still until, slowly, she nodded. Oliver squeezed her hand. They sat together on that park bench for a long time, the only thing punctuating the silence being the worms’ persistent writhing, until eventually the thing that used to be Jane Prentiss stood, lumbered slowly forward back into the dark, and disappeared from sight.

**Author's Note:**

> Anon prompt: Jane and Oliver meeting as avatars. Crossposted from my TMA tumblr, [@prentissed](http://prentissed.tumblr.com).


End file.
